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“Higher  Criticism”  in  the 
Free  Church  Fathers 


RICHARD  A.  RIESEN,  M.A.,  B.D. 

At  the  outset  of  a case  now  nearly  forgotten  but  once  hotly 
debated,  George  Adam  Smith,  Professor  of  Old  Testament  at  the 
Free  Church  College,  Glasgow,  gave  ill-considered  vent  to  an  ill- 
phrased  conviction:  “We  may  say  that  Modern  Criticism  has  won 
its  war  against  the  Traditional  Theories.  It  only  remains  to  fix  the 
amount  of  the  indemnity”.  Though  Smith,  author  of  better  things, 
went  on  to  become  principal  of  Aberdeen  University,  knight, 
moderator  of  his  church’s  assembly  and  a royal  chaplain  in 
Scotland,  his  remark,  “a  strangely  infelicitous  one  for  so  brilliant  a 
writer”,  as  Carnegie  Simpson  called  it,  served  only  to  aggravate  the 
opposition  to  him  caused  by  the  book  in  which  it  appeared, 
Modern  Criticism  and  the  Preaching  of  the  Old  Testament,  the 
Lyman  Beecher  Lectures  he  had  delivered  at  Yale  in  1899. 
However,  on  a motion  by  Robert  Rainy,  seconded  by  James  Orr,  a 
process  against  Smith  was  declined  by  a substantial  majority 
(534-263)  in  the  General  Assembly  of  1902,  thus  foreclosing  the 
possibility  that  a critical  approach  to  Holy  Scripture  would  ever 
again  be  matter  for  a heresy  trial  in  a Scottish  Church. 1 Inasmuch 
as  his  proved  to  be  the  last  impeachment  of  its  kind,  Smith’s 
judgement,  though  not  calculated  to  endear,  was  nonetheless 
correct. 

More  interesting,  if  not  more  important,  is  the  fact  that  Smith 
was  a Free  Churchman.  So  indeed  was  every  other  hero-heretic  who 
led  in  the  revolution  in  biblical  studies  in  Scotland  in  the  last  half  of 
the  nineteenth  century— Marcus  Dods,  A.  B.  Bruce,  and,  most 
famous  and  most  brilliant  of  them  all,  William  Robertson  Smith. 
Though  never  impeached,  A.  B.  Davidson  should  also  be  counted 
in  their  number.  Assistant  and  immediate  successor  to  the  fabled 
‘Rabbi”  Duncan,  he  was  tutor  to  both  Smiths  and  along  with  them 
a member  of  “that  great  Scottish  triad  in  biblical  studies”,  as  S.  A. 
Cook  of  Cambridge  called  them,  “who  mark  an  epoch  in  this  field 
of  research  by  their  ability  to  carry  their  contemporaries  with  them 
over  the  gulf  that  severs  earlier  ‘pre-critical’  Old  Testament  studies 
and  the  attitudes  and  spirit  that  subsequently  came  to  prevail”. 2 To 
the  delight  of  some  and  the  horror  of  not  a few,  the  church  of  the 
Disruption  seemed  to  have  nurtured  not  only  the  most  capable  and 


1 Simpson  has  summarized  the  George  Adam  Smith  case  in  The  Life  of  Principal 
Rainy  (London,  1909),  ii,  269ff. 

2 S.  A.  Cook,  The  Expository  Times,  vol.  liv.,  33. 


119 


most  influential,  but  the  most  critical,  of  Scotland’s  biblical 
scholars. 

Opinions  differ  as  to  the  merits  or  otherwise  of  the  change  in 
attitudes  to  the  Bible  which  thus  took  place.  Those  who  in  general 
approve  of  it  will  agree  with  J.  R.  Fleming  that — along  with  the 
concomitant  change  in  attitudes  to  the  Westminster  Confession— it 
led  to  “an  activity  of  thought,  study,  and  speculation  never  before 
known  in  the  religious  history  of  Scotland”;3  and  1981,  the 
centenary  of  Robertson  Smith’s  removal  from  his  chair  at 
Aberdeen,  will  no  doubt  bring  its  share  of  articles  on  Smith’s 
contribution  as  Semitic  scholar,  anthropologist,  philologist,  and 
martyr  for  academic  freedom.  Those  who  disapprove  will  echo 
Stewart  and  Cameron  who,  writing  in  1910  in  vindication  of  the 
continuing  Free  Church,  declared  that  “the  man  was  got  out  of  the 
way,  but  the  opinions  of  which  he  was  the  advocate  remained.  . . . 
The  heresies  of  Robertson  Smith  . . . are  the  orthodoxies  of  the  men 
who  are  his  successors  in  Scotland  today”.4  But  however  one 
assesses  the  long-term  effects  of  the  change  there  is  general 
agreement  on  its  significance,  particularly  in  view  of  the  fact  that  it 
took  place,  in  less  than  half  a century,  within  the  colleges  of  the 
church  once  led  by  Chalmers,  Cunningham  and  Candlish. 

The  question,  now  familiar,  is  why?  Why  did  the  church  which 
prided  itself  on  being  the  strictest  evangelical  body  in  Christendom 
seem  to  go  further  than  any  other  in  setting  forth  revolutionary 
conceptions  of  the  Bible?5 

The  thesis  of  this  paper  is  that  the  responsibility  may  partly  lie 
with  the  Free  Church  Fathers  themselves,  not  only  because  they 
provided  the  hard  doctrine  for  their  successors  to  react  to,  but 
because  in  their  defence  of  the  traditional  theories  they  sometimes 
asked  “critical”  questions  and  gave  “critical”  answers  or,  what 
often  has  the  same  effect,  gave  inadequate  answers  or  none  at  all, 
thus  perhaps  accelerating  the  very  process  they  intended  to  arrest. 

There  can  be  little  doubt  about  where  the  men  of  1843,  the 
founders  of  New  College,  stood  on  the  question  of  Scripture. 
William  Cunningham,  Robert  Candlish,  and  James  Bannerman,  to 
name  only  three  of  the  Free  Church’s  best  apologists,  staunchly 
defended  what  they  believed  to  be  the  position  of  the  Reformers 
and,  perhaps  especially,  of  the  Westminster  Confession.  “The 
authority  of  the  holy  scripture”,  says  section  IV,  chapter  I of  the 

3 J.  R.  Fleming,  The  Church  in  Scotland,  1875-1929  (Edinburgh,  1933),  226. 

4 Alexander  Stewart  and  J.  Kennedy  Cameron,  The  Free  Church  of  Scotland, 
1843-1910  (Edinburgh  and  Glasgow,  1910),  63. 

5 Fleming,  The  Church  in  Scotland,  1875-1929,  9.  Simpson  also  poses  the  question 
in  The  Life  of  Principal  Rainy,  i,  307.  It  is  taken  for  granted  that  the  answer  in 
the  most  general  terms  is  “because  it  was  the  Evangelicals  who  tended  to  take  the 
Bible  and  questions  concerning  the  Bible  most  seriously.”  But  such  an  answer 
only  underlines  the  irony  of  the  situation. 


120 


Standards,  “dependeth  not  upon  the  testimony  of  any  man  or 
church,  but  wholly  upon  God,  the  author  thereof;  and  therefore  it 
is  to  be  received,  because  it  is  the  word  of  God  ; and  section  VIII 
declares  that  “The  Old  Testament  in  Hebrew  ...  and  the  New 
Testament  in  Greek  . . . being  immediately  inspired  by  God,  and  by 
his  singular  care  and  providence  kept  pure  in  all  ages,  are  therefore 
authentical;  so  as  in  all  controversies  of  religion,  the  Church  is 
finally  to  appeal  unto  them’’. 

Although  the  view  of  Scripture  outlined  in  the  Confession 
might  well  serve  as  a statement  of  what  the  Disruption  Fathers  were 
defending,  it  has  recently  been  maintained  that  they  probably  had 
less  in  common  with  Calvin  or  the  Westminster  Divines  than  with 
Robert  Haldane  the  Congregationalist,  Baptist,  protagonist  in  the 
Apocrypha  Controversy  and  “Founding  Father  of  Fundamentalism 
in  Scotland”.6 

Haldane’s  position  was  precise  and  unequivocal:  “the 

inspiration  to  which  the  Scriptures  lay  claim”,  he  said,  “is  in  the 
fullest  sense  plenary  in  every  part  of  them,  extending  both  to  the 
ideas,  and  to  the  words  in  which  these  ideas  are  expressed”.7 
Cunningham,  who  frequently  cited  Haldane,  was  of  a like  mind: 
“The  Holy  Spirit  not  merely  superintended  the  writers  so  as  to 
preserve  them  from  error”,  he  declared,  “but  suggested  to  them 
the  words  in  which  the  matter  He  communicated  to  them  was  to  be 
conveyed”. 8 Candlish,  only  slightly  less  precise,  claimed  essentially 
the  same  thing  (“What  they  say,  or  write  under  this  guidance,  is  as 
truly  said  and  written  by  God,  through  them,  as  if  their 
instrumentally  were  not  used  at  all.  God  is  in  the  fullest  sense 
responsible  for  every  word  of  it.”)9  and  Bannerman,  whose 
lengthy  volume  is  an  exhaustive  if  not  always  lucid  treatment  of  the 
subject,  said  of  the  Scriptures,  “In  the  first  place,  they  contain  a 
communication  of  truth  from  God  supernaturally  given  to  man; 
and  in  the  second  place,  they  contain  that  truth  supernaturally 
transferred  to  human  language,  and  therefore  free  from  all  mixture 
or  addition  or  error”. 1 0 This  may  be  taken  as  the  traditional  view. 

6 Andrew  L.  Drummond  and  James  Bulloch,  The  Church  in  Victorian  Scotland, 
1843-1874  (Edinburgh,  1975),  251-253. 

7 Robert  Haldane,  The  Authenticity  and  Inspiration  of  the  Holy  Scriptures 
Considered;  in  Opposition  to  the  Erroneous  Opinions  that  are  Circulated  on  the 
Subject  (Edinburgh,  1827),  16. 

8 William  Cunningham,  Theological  Lectures  on  Subjects  Connected  with  Natural 
Theology,  Evidences  of  Christianity,  The  Canon  and  Inspiration  of  Scripture 
(London,  1878),  346. 

9 R.  S.  Candlish,  Reason  and  Revelation  (London,  1860),  23.  Reason  and 
Revelation  is  a collection.  Its  first  two  chapters  “The  Authority  and  Inspiration 
of  the  Holy  Scriptures”  and  “The  Infallibility  of  Holy  Scripture”  were 
delivered  as  lectures  under  the  same  titles  in  1851  and  1857  respectively  and  both 
are  available  in  pamphlet  form. 

10  James  Bannerman,  Inspiration:  The  Infallible  Truth  and  Divine  Authority  of  the 
Holy  Scriptures  (Edinburgh,  1865),  149-150. 


121 


The  traditionalists’  concern  to  make  clear  what  their  doctrine  of 
inspiration  was  was  balanced  by  a concern  to  make  clear  what  it 
was  not.  It  was  not,  for  one  thing,  a theory  of  how  the  Scriptures 
were  inspired.  Candlish  spoke  for  them  all  when  he  said:  “The  fact 
of  inspiration  may  be  proved  by  Divine  testimony,  and  accepted  as 
an  ascertained  article  of  belief,  while  the  manner  of  it  may  be 
neither  revealed  from  heaven,  nor  within  the  range  of  discovery 
upon  earth”.11  It  was  not,  for  another  thing,  a theory  which 
eliminated  the  human  element  in  Scripture.  All  agreed  that  the 
Bible,  inspired  even  in  the  language  it  employs,  is  nonetheless  the 
creation  of  men,  marked,  as  Bannerman  put  it,  “by  the  human 
individuality  that  distinguishes  the  writing  of  any  man  who  thinks 
and  writes  with  freedom  and  earnestness  in  his  own  character  and 
without  any  disguise”. 1 2 Talk  of  mechanical  dictation  on  the  one 
hand  or  degrees  of  inspiration  on  the  other  made  up  no  part  of  their 
case.  They  explicitly  repudiated  both,  thus  opposing  those  who 
made  too  little  of  human  authorship  as  well  as  those  who  made  too 
much  of  it. 1 3 Their  doctrine  was  neither  more  nor  less  than  that  the 
Bible  is  patently  but  inexplicably  both  human  and  divine. 

Such  was  the  theory  that  all  of  its  defenders  referred  to  as  the 
doctrine  of  plenary  inspiration:  Haldane  called  it  verbal  or  plenary 
inspiration,  using  the  terms  interchangeably,  and  Cunningham, 
more  dogmatically,  maintained  that  “in  fairness  the  word  plenary 
should  be  reserved  for  the  view  which  asserts  the  entire  verbal 
inspiration”. 1 4 

The  conspicuously  careful  language,  absent  even  from  the 
Confession  of  Faith,  can  best  be  appreciated  in  light  of  the 
opponents  against  which  it  was  directed.  By  1850,  the  fathers  felt, 
the  word  inspiration  had  been  so  abused  that  it  could  no  longer  be 
assumed  that  it  meant  what  it  had  always  meant;  it  could  no  longer 
be  left  unattended  by  qualifying  adjectives.  Candlish  even  had 
second  thoughts  about  the  word  inspiration  itself. 

“I  intend,  indeed,  [he  said]  rather  to  avoid  the  use  of  this 
word  inspiration;  not  because  I consider  it  unsuitable— it  is 
the  right  word — but  because  it  has  been,  I fear  I must  say 
disingenuously,  perverted  from  its  recognized  meaning,  as 
expressive  of  that  divine  superintendence  of  the  process  of 
revelation  which  secures  infallibly  the  truth  and  accuracy  of 

11  Candlish,  Reason  and  Revelation,  22. 

12  Bannerman,  Inspiration,  418. 

13  The  potentially  awkward  relationship  between  the  traditionalists  and  some  of  the 
esteemed  older  writers  who  may  have  slipped  into  “one-sided  and  extreme 
modes  of  expression”  in  discussing  inspiration  is  illustrated  by  Andrew 
Crichton’s  comments  on  John  Owen,  in  “The  Purpose  and  Form  of  Holy 
Scripture”,  Christianity  and  Recent  Speculation:  Six  Lectures  by  Ministers  of 
the  Free  Church,  with  a preface  by  Robert  S.  Candlish  (Edinburgh,  1866),  1 16. 

14  Cunningham,  Lectures,  345. 


122 


what  is  revealed,  and  made  to  signify  the  mere  elevation, 
more  or  less,  of  human,  and  therefore  fallible,  capacity  or 
faculty”.15 

As  Candlish’s  remarks  indicate,  the  main  enemy  was  not  the  out 
and  out  attackers  of  Scripture.  It  was  those — Lowth  and 
Dodderidge,  for  example,  in  the  eighteenth  century  and  Hill,  Pye 
Smith  and  Henderson  in  the  nineteenth — who,  while  professing  to 
be  the  Bible’s  defenders,  effectually  undermined  its  authority, 
either  by  holding  that  the  Bible  is  inspired,  but  only  in  part,  or  by 
claiming  that  its  inspiration  is  the  inspiration  of  the  writers  rather 
than  of  the  writings,  “the  quickening  of  spiritual  thought  and 
feeling  from  within”,  as  Bannerman  described  it,  “not  the 
presentation  of  supernatural  truth  from  without.  ...”  1 6 In  a word 
what  the  defenders  of  .the  older  view  opposed  was  subjectivism,  in 
particular  that  form  of  subjectivism  which  found  expression  in 
theories  of  partial  inspiration.  It  was  not  the  later  and  full-blown 
criticism  of  Graf  and  Wellhausen,  cold  and  clinical,  everywhere 
laying  laboratory  hands  on  Moses  and  Isaiah,  that  drew  their  fire. 
It  was  almost  the  opposite.  It  was  the  spirit  of  Coleridge  and 
Schleiermacher,  “spiritual”  or  pietistic,  pretending  to  a fuller 
understanding  of  Scripture  while  it  substituted  experience  for  truth. 

The  older  school,  indeed,  considered  themselves  the  upholders, 
not  only  of  the  right  doctrine  of  inspiration,  but  of  doctrine  in 
general.  They  resisted  any  attempt  to  ground  Christianity  in  “blind 
feelings”.  Christian  belief,  for  them,  had  to  do  with  the 
comprehension  of  truths,  not  with  intuition  or  what  Candlish 
described  as  “a  subtle  sort  of  refined  mysticism.”  Theirs  was  a 
theology  of  cognition:  they  were,  in  a sense,  as  rational  as  the 
rationalists. 1 7 

The  irony  is  that  in  the  battle  for  the  Bible  it  may  have  been 
precisely  the  rational  character  of  orthodoxy  which  forced  it  to 
open  up  gaps  in  the  line  which  it  could  neither  anticipate  nor  close. 
As  it  attempted  to  defend  itself — for  apologetic  is  inextricably 
bound  up  with  dogmatic  religion — it  also  exposed  itself,  preparing 
if  not  encouraging,  the  counter-attack.  Any  general  survey  of  the 
defences  of  Scripture  by  the  early  Free  Church  divines  will  plainly 
show  what  they  were  up  to:  they  intended  simply  to  expound  and 
thereby  safeguard  what  one  review  of  Bannerman’s  book  called 
“the  more  rigid  doctrine  of  inspiration”.18  A closer  look  will 


15  R.  S.  Candlish,  Reason  and  Revelation,  54. 

16  Bannerman,  Inspiration,  142. 

17  Put,of  .coul'se  neither  are  some  kinds  of  rationalism  incompatible  with  some 
kinds  of  subjectivism.  Schleiermacher  was  perhaps  the  leading  proponent  of  an 
essentially  ann-rational  subjectivism  which  in  its  approach  to  Scripture  was 

rationalistic  . For  a useful  comment  on  this  see  John  Baillie,  The  idea  of 
Revelation  in  Recent  Thought  (London,  1956),  10-15. 


123 

C 


reveal,  however,  not  only  a surprising  variety  of  opinion  on  issues 
of  fundamental  importance,  but  also  more  than  might  be  expected 
of  the  kind  of  argument  that  is  either  critical  in  itself  or  tends  to 
invite  critical  analysis.  A few  illustrations  will  have  to  suffice  to 
make  the  point. 

Candlish:  Specific  Texts,  Issues  and  Difficulties 

Candlish’s  commentary  on  Genesis  is  an  especially  good 
illustration  of  how  difficult  it  is  to  guard  the  treasures  of  antiquity 
that  they  be  not  lost,  as  Rabbi  Duncan  admonished,  without  being, 
in  his  words,  “bigotedly  conservative— i.e.  blind  to  progressive 
light”.19  The  commentary  was  first  published  in  1843  in  three 
volumes.  It  was  revised  and  issued  again  in  two  volumes  in  1868 
under  a slightly  different  title.  A third  edition,  essentially  the  same 
as  the  second,  was  offered  in  one  volume  in  1884.  The  differences 
between  the  editions,  especially  between  the  first  and  second, 
though  slight,  reflect  somewhat  the  changing  attitudes  in  biblical 
scholarship,  albeit  less  of  the  changes  in  science  than  one  might 
expect,  considering  that  Origin  of  Species  as  well  as  Essays  and 
Reviews  had  created  its  sensation  in  the  interim.  Toward  scientific 
and  biblical  scholarship  there  is  mixed  feeling  on  Candlish’s  part. 
Both,  the  commentary  suggests,  he  might  heartily  endorse,  if 
somehow  he  could  be  persuaded  that  they  were  completely 
trustworthy. 

The  object  of  the  first  two  chapters  of  Genesis,  Candlish 
maintained  in  all  the  editions  including  the  first,  is  not  scientific  but 
religious.  “Hence  it  was  to  be  expected  that,  while  nothing 
contained  in  it  could  ever  be  found  really  and  in  the  long  run  to 
contradict  science”,  he  said,  “the  gradual  progress  of  discovery 
might  give  occasion  for  apparent  temporary  contradictions.  The 
current  interpretation  of  the  Divine  record,  in  such  matters,  will 
naturally,  and  indeed,  must  necessarily,  accommodate  itself  to  the 
actual  state  of  scientific  knowledge  and  opinion  at  the  time.”30 
The  essential  facts  of  the  account,  he  claimed,  are  the  recent  date 
assigned  to  the  existence  of  man  on  the  earth,  the  previous 
preparation  of  the  earth  for  his  habitation,  the  gradual  nature  of 
the  work  of  creation  and  the  distinction  and  succession  of  days 
during  its  progress.  These,  he  affirmed,  cannot  be  impugned  by  any 
scientific  discoveries — Darwin  notwithstanding.  At  the  same  time, 
he  suggested,  a very  long  history  may  have  preceded  that  given  in 
Genesis.  “What  countless  generations  of  living  organisms  may 


18  The  Bibliotheca  Sacra,  vol.,  xxii.  (Andover,  1865),  352. 

19  William  Knight,  Colloquia  Peripatetica:  Notes  of  Conversations  with  John 
Duncan  (Edinburgh,  1879),  9. 

20  R.  S.  Candlish,  The  Book  of  Genesis  Expounded  in  a Series  of  Discourses, 
2 vols.  (Edinburgh,  1868),  i,  19. 


124 


have  teemed  in  the  chaotic  waters  or  brooded  over  the  dark  abyss”, 
he  said,  “it  is  not  within  the  scope  of  the  inspiring  Spirit  to  tell. 
There  is  room  and  space  for  whole  volumes  of  such  matter  before 
the  Holy  Ghost  takes  up  the  record”.2 1 

The  themes  which  dominate  Candlish’s  discussion  of  the 
creation  narrative  are  that  it  is  a figurative  account  and  that  it  is 
therefore  a partial  account,  the  full  meaning  of  which  will  be 
revealed  only  when  the  times  of  the  restitution  of  all  things  have 
arrived.  “The  exact  literal  sense  of  much  that  is  now  obscure  or 
doubtful”,  he  averred,  “as  well  as  the  bearing  and  importance  of 
what  may  seem  insignificant  or  irrelevant,  will  then  clearly 
appear.”2  2 

Candlish’s  emphasis  on  “the  moral  and  spiritual  aspect  of  this 
sacred  narrative”  is  conspicuous.  He  took  it  as  a description  of  the 
original  relation  of  man  to  his  Maker  and  a figurative 
representation  of  his  restoration  from  moral  chaos  to  spiritual 
beauty.23  One  of  his  major  concerns  was  to  restore  to  the  story 
something  of  what  he  considered  its  essential  character.  “This 
divine  record  of  creation”,  he  judged,  “remarkable  for  the  most 
perfect  simplicity,  has  been  sadly  complicated  and  embarrassed  by 
the  human  theories  and  speculations  with  which  it  has  unhappily 
become  entangled.” 2 4 

Clearly  Candlish  did  not  regard  Genesis  1 and  2 as  primarily 
scientific  or  historical.  Yet  in  no  sense  was  he  denying  the 
inspiration  of  the  Scriptures  by  saying  so.  On  the  contrary,  he  was 
attempting  to  safeguard  it  by  putting  it  out  of  the  range  of  critical 
attack  altogether;  for  if  Genesis  was  not  intended  to  be  history  or 
science  then  it  is  not  liable  to  the  charge  that  it  contradicts  the 
evidence  of  historical  or  scientific  investigation — an  approach, 
incidentally,  which  is  very  like  the  modern  one.25  In  the  prefatory 
note  to  the  1843  edition,  Candlish  expressed  the  hope  that  “by  the 
blessing  of  God,  the  tendency  of  what  follows  is  not  to  raise 
speculative  questions,  but  to  cherish  a spiritual  and  practical  frame 

21  ibid. 

22  Ibid.,  20. 

23  Ibid.,  19. 

24  Ibid. , 18. 

25  Marcus  Dods,  accused  in  1890  of  subverting  the  doctrine  of  inspiration,  wrote  a 
commentary  which  in  some  ways  is  strikingly  like  Candlish’s  and  in  it  said  of  the 
compiler  of  Genesis:  “He  does  describe  the  process  of  creation,  but  he  describes 
it  only  for  the  sake  of  the  ideas  regarding  man’s  relation  to  God  and  God’s 
relation  to  the  world  which  he  can  thereby  convey.  Indeed  what  we  mean  by 
scientific  knowledge  was  not  in  all  the  thoughts  of  the  people  for  whom  the  book 
was  written.  The  subject  of  creation,  of  the  beginning  of  man  upon  earth  was 
not  approached  from  that  side  at  all;  and  if  we  are  to  understand  what  is  here 
written  we  must  burst  the  trammels  of  our  own  modes  of  thought  and  read  these 
chapters  not  as  a chronological,  astronomical,  geological,  biological  statement 
but  as  a moral  or  spiritual  conception”.  The  Book  of  Genesis  (London,  1889)! 


125 


of  mind,  in  the  devout  study  of  the  Word  of  the  living  God”.2  6 He 
wanted  to  steer  clear  of  any  confrontation  with  allegedly  hostile 
science,  no  doubt  because  he  thought  it  unnecessary  or 
unprofitable  or  unjustified. 

Candlish  may  or  may  not  have  successfully  avoided  a conflict 
with  science.  He  found  it  much  more  difficult  to  avoid  a conflict 
with  biblical  criticism.  In  the  revision  of  1868,  in  an  appendix 
“some  may  think  might  perhaps  be  more  properly  placed  as  a 
preface  or  introduction”,  Candlish  evidently  felt  himself  obligated 
to  remark  on  current  trends.  Moses,  it  seemed  to  him,  had  fared 
very  much  as  Homer  had  fared:  Genesis  and  the  Iliad  had  both 
been  torn  to  shreds  and  “parcelled  out  among  a motley  and 
miscellaneous  crowd  of  unknown  documents  and  imaginary 
authors”.27  Candlish  saw  multi-author  theories  as  “an  appeal 
from  word-catching  and  hair-splitting  analysis”  and  gave  his  own 
judgement  that  Genesis  had  “the  stamp  and  impress  of  an 
undivided  authorship”. 2 8 At  the  same  time,  he  urged  that  his  view 
was  not  inconsistent  with  there  being  many  traces  in  Genesis,  both 
of  earlier  documents  or  traditions,  and  of  later  editions  and 
revisions.  From  the  very  nature  of  the  case,  he  argued,  it  must  be 
so:  it  would  be  absurd  to  suppose  that  learned  and  inspired  authors 
would  not  take  advantage  of  the  material,  legendary,  lyrical,  and 
monumental,  at  their  disposal.29  Candlish  therefore  agreed  with 
the  critics,  but  only  to  a point:  there  is  evidence  in  Genesis  of 
“source  material” — common  sense  would  tell  us  that  there  might 
be — but  a documentary  hypothesis  in  anything  like  its  more 
advanced  formulations  had  overtones  which  were  for  him  quite 
unacceptable. 

Candlish’s  handling  of  Genesis  nicely  illustrates  the  problem 
posed  for  those  defending  the  traditional  view  of  Scripture,  the 
problem  namely,  that  it  could  not  be  defended  apart  from  a 
discussion  of  difficulties  for  which  the  solutions  being  offered  were 
considered  inadequate  or  destructive  and  yet  for  which  the 
defenders  themselves,  because  they  had  not  faced  them  before,  had 
no  perfect  answers  either.  Those  who  took  a softer  line  on 
inspiration  managed  to  avoid  such  dilemmas.  They  relied  more  on 
experience  and  less  on  doctrine.  Their  style  of  piety  decreased  the 
urgency  to  give  right  answers  to  theological  questions  and  increased 
their  freedom  to  criticise  the  Bible.’"  In  that  sense  it  was, 


26  R.  S.  Candlish,  Exposition  of  the  Book  of  Genesis,  3 vols.  (Edinburgh,  1843), 
vol.,  i,  p.  iv. 

27  R.  S.  Candlish,  The  Book  of  Genesis  Expounded  in  a Series  of  Discourses,  ii, 
349. 

28  Ibid.,  350. 

29  Ibid.,  350-351. 

30  See  for  instance  Samuel  Taylor  Coleridge,  Aids  to  Reflection  and  Confessions  of 
an  Inquiring  Spirit  (London.  1893),  333ff. 


126 


legitimately,  a way  out  of  the  difficulties  and  no  doubt  attractive 
partly  for  that  reason.  But  their  subjectivism  is  what  Candlish  and 
the  others  opposed  in  defence  of  an  objective  word  of  God. 

Nonetheless  there  are  hints  here  and  there  that  Candlish 
himself,  thoroughly  rational  as  he  was,  may  have  been  guided  from 
time  to  time,  even  in  argument,  by  something  as  close  to  feeling  as 
it  was  to  reason.31  An  example  is  his  discussion  of  the  self- 
evidencing  inspiration  of  the  Bible.  “To  a mind  rightly  exercised 
upon  them”,  he  said,  “and  above  all,  to  a heart  influenced  by  the 
same  Holy  Spirit  who  breathes  in  them,  the  Scriptures  evidence 
themselves  to  be  of  divine  authority  and  divine  inspiration”. 3 2 As 
any  son  simply  knows  that  a letter  is  from  his  father,  Candlish 
urged,  so  the  child  of  God  feels  the  divine  impress  of  Scripture.  It 
breathes  all  through,  even  in  the  geneologies  of  Matthew  and  Luke 
and  “the  dry  catalogue  of  names  in  the  tenth  chapter  of 
Nehemiah”. 3 3 

“My  own  actual  hand-writing  may  not  be  on  the  page: 
sickness,  or  some  casualty,  may  have  made  an  amanuensis 
necessary.  But  my  boy  knows  my  letter  nevertheless— knows 
it  as  all  my  own— knows  it  by  the  instinct,  the  intuition  of 
affection,  and  needs  no  other  proof”.34 

To  his  “cold,  cynical,  hypercritical  schoolmates”  who  might 
question  what  he  sees  of  his  father  in  “that  barren  itinerary  with 
which  the  letter  begins— the  dry  list  of  places  he  tells  you  he  has 
gone  through;  or  in  that  matter-of-course  message  about  a cloak 
and  some  books  with  which  it  ends”,  the  boy  would  reply: 

“You  may  be  too  knowing  to  sympathize  with  me,  ...  but 
there  is  enough  in  every  line  here  to  make  me  know  my 
father’s  voice;  and  if  he  has  been  at  pains  to  write  down  for 
my  satisfaction  the  names  of  towns  and  cities  and  men — if  he 
does  give  me  simple  notices  about  common  things,  I see 
nothing  strange  in  that.  I love  him  all  the  better  for  his 


31  According  to  Robert  Rainy,  Candlish  was  a “remarkable  dialection”  with  an 

aptitude  for  dogma,  and  more  particularly  for  dogmatic  precision.”  On  the 
matter  of  inspiration  however:  “He  manifested  clearly  enough  a distaste  about 
minutiae  . . . but  he  did  so  in  the  interest  of  a high  view  of  inspiration.  He  felt 
himself  sitting  at  the  feet  of  a divine  informant,  and  listening  to  a divine  voice 
Ihe  tracts  somewhat  occasional  in  their  character,  which  he  issued  on  this 
SUubJtCt’  a.  V1,  !l  for  their  object  to  clear  away  misunderstandings  or  perplexities 
which  might  hmder  others  from  doing  the  same.”  In  Rainy’s  chapter  on 

Snhnhr„ah  ' I?!'"  William  Wilson,  Memorials  of  Robert  Smith  Candlish 
(tclin burgh  1880),  604.  Rainy  s own  views  are  set  out  in  his  The  Bible  and 
Criticism  (London,  1878). 

32  R.  S.  Candlish,  Reason  and  Revelation  40 

33  Ibid. 

34  Ibid. , 41. 


127 


kindness  and  condescension;  and  whatever  you  may 
insinuate,  I will  believe  that  this  is  all  throughout  his  very 
letter,  and  that  he  has  a gracious  meaning  in  all  that  he  writes 
to  me  in  it,  however  frivolous  it  may  seem  to  you”.35 

It  is  the  language  of  genuine  devotion  and  it  rings  true,  but  it  is 
hardly  an  argument  of  the  sort  that  Candlish  ordinarily  professes  to 
require.  Moreover— and  this  is  the  point— it  is  precisely  the  sort  of 
argument  that  Candlish  generally  opposes.36  The  exact  phrases  in 
fact — instinct  and  intuition— which  he  condemns  elsewhere,  he 
approves  here.  It  is  true  that  what  Candlish  condemns  is  inspiration 
regarded  as  intuition  and  what  he  approves  is  inspiration 
recognized  by  intuition  and  that  the  two  things  must  not  be 
confused;  nevertheless,  even  his  use  of  such  language  seems 
somehow  inconsistent.  The  Bible,  Candlish  argued,  must  never  be 
thought  of  as  the  product  merely  of  heightened  instinctive  or 
intuitional  powers.  And  yet,  how  do  we  know  it  to  be  the  word  of 
God?— “by  the  instinct,  the  intuition  of  affirmation”  Candlish 
answered,  and  we  need  no  other  proof.  There  is  in  Candlish  more 
of  mixed  feeling,  if  not  theological  ambiguity,  than  perhaps  he  was 
aware  of,  which  only  serves  to  underline  the  complicated  nature  of 
the  case  and  the  state  of  the  argument  at  the  time. 

Candlish’s  use  of  imagination,  persuasive  as  rhetoric  but  not 
convincing  as  argument,  is  illustrated  in  his  defence  of  the  lack  of 
uniformity  between  the  gospel  narratives,  a problem  often  alluded 
to  by  opponents  of  full  inspiration.  His  argument  consists  in  a 
supposition.  Suppose,  Candlish  suggested,  that  Christ,  during  His 
lifetime  or  after  His  resurrection,  wanted  four  of  His  followers  to 
write  down,  separately  and  independently,  what  they  remembered 
of  His  sayings  and  doings  and  then  to  bring  their  several  accounts 
to  Him  for  revision  and  correction.  The  knowledge  that  what  they 
wrote  was  to  be  submitted  to  their  Master’s  eye,  Candlish 
contended,  would  be  a stimulus  to  all  of  them  to  do  their  best;  it 
would  also  give  them  boldness  and  freedom  in  executing  their  task. 
In  other  words,  the  assurance  that  Christ  would  be  editing  their 


35  Ibid.,  41-42.  On  almost  every  important  issue  Candlish  and  Coleridge  were 
opposed,  but  on  this  they  voice  a similar  sentiment.  “If  in  the  holy  men  thus 
actuated  [by  the  Holy  Spirit]  all  imperfection  of  knowledge,  all  participation  in 
the  mistakes  and  limits  of  their  several  ages  had  been  excluded’’,  Coleridge  said, 
“how  could  these  Writings  be  or  become  the  history  and  example,  the  echo  and 
more  lustrous  image  of  the  work  and  warfare  of  the  sanctifying  Principle  in 
us? — If  after  all  this,  and  in  spite  of  all  this,  some  captious  litigator  should  lay 
hold  of  a text  here  or  there — St  Paul’s  cloak  left  at  Troas  with  Carpus,  or  a verse 
from  the  Canticles,  and  ask:  ‘Of  what  spiritual  use  is  this?’ — the  answer  is 
ready: — It  proves  to  us  that  nothing  can  be  so  trifling  as  not  to  supply  an  evil 
heart  with  a pretext  for  unbelief”.  Aids  to  Reflection  and  Confessions  of  an 
Inquiring  Spirit,  336-337. 

36  See  especially  Reason  and  Revelation,  16ff. 

I 


128 


work,  rather  than  hamper  them,  would  release  them  from  the  fear 
of  not  giving  verbatim  every  sentence  of  a discourse,  or  not  stating 
every  particular  about  a miracle;  furthermore,  they  would  not  be 
bothered  about  apparent  differences  between  their  accounts.  Each 
would  follow  his  own  bent  and  there  would  be  “a  free  play  and 
exercise  of  their  faculties  and  feelings”.37 

And  what  will  Christ  do  with  the  four  manuscripts  submitted  to 
Him?  Will  He  retrench  here  and  enlarge  there,  cut,  alter  and 
amend?  He  will  not,  Candlish  maintained. 

“He  will  leave  the  memoirs  in  the  freedom  and  freshness  of 
their  original  spontaneous  simplicity;  only  taking  care  that 
there  is  nothing  in  them  for  which  he  would  not  be  willing  to 
stand  voucher.  He  prefers  their  easy  and  artless  reminiscence 
to  an  absolutely  perfect  history,  as  giving  really  a truer  and 
more  life-like  representation  of  himself.  He  suffers  them  to 
go  forth  under  his  sanction,  although  he  quite  well  foresees 
that  the  different  ways  in  which  they  tell  the  story  of  his  life 
may  give  rise  to  questions  that  could  only  be  solved  by  a fuller 
and  more  exact  narrative  than  any  one  of  all  the  four 
professes  to  be”. 3 8 

Candlish  may  very  well  be  right,  but  what  are  the  implications 
of  this  kind  of  argument  for  his  case  over-all?  Even  if  easy  and 
artless  reminiscences  do  give,  in  some  sense,  a truer  representation 
than  absolutely  perfect  history,  where  does  Candlish’s  saying  so 
leave  his  doctrine  of  inspiration?  He  has  practically  invited  attacks 
on  the  historicity  of  the  Gospels— or  at  least  on  the  necessity  of 
historical  accuracy  in  them.39 

Here,  as  with  Genesis,  Candlish  was  facing  what  Cunningham 
referred  to  as  “the  one  grand  difficulty”  attaching  to  the  subject  of 
inspiration,  indeed  to  all  theological  speculation,  “the  difficulty, 
viz.,  of  explaining  how  it  is  that  God  and  men  are  combined  or 
united,  as  in  some  sense  they  are,  in  the  productions  of  man’s 
actions”.40  That  he  did  not  solve  it  is  no  condemnation,  only  a 
forceful  reminder  of  how  exasperatingly  elusive  solutions  to  it  are. 

Cunningham:  Words 

Cunningham  had  not  solved  it  either,  as  at  least  one  of  the 


37  Ibid.,  78. 

38  Ibid.,  79. 

39  There  is  an  affinity  between  Candlish  and  Marcus  Dods  on  this  issue  as  well. 
Although  it  is  impossible  to  claim  that  everything  recorded  in  the  Gospels 
happened  precisely  as  related,  Dods  maintained,  still  there  is  no  doubt  that  “the 
Gospefs  present  us  with  a lifelike  portrait  of  Christ  and  with  so  accurate  a report 
of  His  words  that  we  can  form  a true  estimate  of  His  teaching”.  The  Bible • Its 
Origin  and  Nature  (Edinburgh,  1905),  209-210. 

40  Cunningham,  Lectures,  403. 


129 


reviews  of  his  Lectures  found  it  fairly  easy  to  show.41  More 
important,  however,  is  the  overall  character  of  his  approach  to 
Scripture.  While  he  was  in  one  sense  the  most  “critical”  of  all  the 
apologists,  he  was  at  the  same  time  the  most  opposed  to  critical 
scholarship. 

Cunningham  emphasised  the  verbal  nature  of  inspiration.  His 
frequent  use  of  the  complete  phrase  “verbal  plenary  inspiration”  is 
conspicuous  and  distinguishes  him  from  his  allies.  “God  has  given 
us  no  certain  means  of  knowing  his  will  but  from  his  word”,  he 
declared,  “and  no  certain  means  of  knowing  the  meaning  of  his 
word,  but  from  an  investigation  of  the  actual  statements  which  it 
contains”. 4 : Whatever  else  we  may  do  in  preparing  to  expound  the 
Scriptures  we  must  always  come  back  to  the  actual  words  of 
Scripture:  “There  is  nothing  above  or  beyond  them,  there  is 
nothing  beside  or  apart  from  them,  that  conveys  to  us  authentically 
or  authoritatively  the  will  of  God  for  our  salvation.  The  written 
word  must  be  at  once  our  starting-point  and  our  goal.”43 

The  Scriptures  have  but  one  sense,  Cunningham  maintained, 
and  that  one  sense  can  be  discovered  only  by  investigating  the 
literal  and  grammatical  meaning  of  Scripture’s  words  exactly  as 
they  stand.44  He  therefore  authorized  the  grammatical-historical 
method — as  long  as  by  it  was  meant  that  “the  statements  of 
Scripture  are  to  be  interpreted  according  to  the  ordinary  rules  of 
philology  and  grammar;  and  that  the  actual  meaning  of  the 
vocables,  and  the  actual  import  of  the  phrases  and  constructions 
occurring  in  the  books  of  Scripture,  are  to  be  ascertained  by 
testimony  as  matters  of  historical  fact”.45 

The  caveat  is  significant,  for  Cunningham,  like  Candlish,  was 
caught  between  recommending  a technique,  even  a modern 
technique,  and  protesting  against  the  use  to  which  he  felt  it  was 
being  put.  While  he  approved  in  general  of  handling  Scripture 
according  to  its  “historical  sense”,  he  warned  that  the  phrase  was 
often  used  by  German  writers  to  indicate  a principle  which 
undermined  the  authority  of  Scripture,  the  principle  namely,  that  it 

41  The  liberal  American  journal  Bibliotheca  Sacra,  which  regarded  the  volume  as 
“a  specimen  of  the  theological  methods  which  were  sanctioned  by  the  Free 
Church  during  the  first  year  of  its  existence”,  pointed  out  that  Cunningham’s 
claim  that  the  actual  words  of  Scripture  were  inspired  as  much  as  its  message  was 
modified  somewhat  by  his  claim  that  “every  portion  of  God’s  word  is  also  in 
some  sense  man’s  word,  as  it  has  all  passed  through  some  man’s  mind,  and  been 
brought  in  some  way  into  contact  with  his  faculties  and  with  his  faculties  in 
exercise”.  The  Bibliotheca  Sacra,  vol.,  xxxi.  (Andover,  1878),  783-787.  See 
Lectures,  374.  It  is  interesting  too  that  of  all  the  topics  Cunningham  discusses  in 
his  Lectures,  Bibliotheca  Sacra  select  his  treatment  of  inspiration  as  an 
illustration  of  “Dr  Cunningham’s  general  habit  of  reasoning”. 

42  Cunningham,  Lectures,  582. 

43  Ibid. 


is  not  the  meaning  of  the  discourses  of  Christ  as  we  have  them  that 
is  to  be  sought,  but  the  meaning  His  hearers  were  likely  to  attach  to 
them.  On  that  doubtful  principle,  Cunningham  went  on,  the 
Germans  then  try  to  find  out  historically,  “though  with  very  scanty 
evidence,  for  none  are  more  credulous  than  infidels”,  what  were 
the  prevalent  notions  on  the  subjects  spoken  of  and  make  these,  or 
their  own  impressions  regarding  them,  and  not  the  grammatical 
meaning  of  the  words,  the  standard  of  interpretation. 4 6 

Cunningham’s  practice  was  altogether  consistent  with  his 
theory:  the  doctrine  of  the  verbal  inspiration  of  Scripture  dictated 
the  closest  possible  scrutiny  of  every  word  of  Scripture,  and 
nothing  less  than  “a  deliberate  and  persevering  investigation  of  the 
appropriate  evidence  according  to  distinct  and  well-established 
rules”  would  do.  His  method  was  not  far  removed  from  that  of  the 
critics.  He  differed  from  them  only  in  his  assumptions  and 
therefore  in  his  conclusions. 

The  continuity  and  the  discontinuity  between  Cunningham’s 
and  later  views  may  be  seen  by  comparing  Cunningham’s  with 
remarks  made  by  William  Robertson  Smith  in  a lecture  delivered  at 
the  opening  of  the  Free  Church  College  in  Aberdeen. 

“The  higher  criticism  does  not  mean  negative  criticism  [Smith 
maintained].  It  means  the  fair  and  honest  looking  at  the  Bible 
as  a historical  record,  and  the  effort  everywhere  to  reach  the 
real  meaning  and  historical  setting,  not  of  individual  passages 
of  the  Scripture,  but  of  the  Scripture  Records  as  a whole;  and 
to  do  this  we  must  apply  the  same  principle  that  the 
Reformation  applied  to  detailed  Exegesis.  We  must  let  the 
Bible  speak  for  itself.  Our  notions  of  the  origin,  the  purpose, 
the  character  of  the  Scripture  books  must  be  drawn,  not  from 
vain  traditions,  but  from  a historical  study  of  the  books 
themselves.  This  process  can  be  dangerous  to  faith  only  when 
it  is  begun  without  faith— when  we  forget  that  the  Bible 
history  is  no  profane  history,  but  the  story  of  God’s  saving 
self-manifestation”.4  7 

Both  Cunningham  and  Smith  wanted  detailed  exegesis  as  the 
method  of  reaching  the  real  meaning,  not  of  isolated  passages,  but 
of  the  Bible  as  a whole,  and  both  insisted  that  any  approach  to 
Scripture  would  be  dangerous  if  it  was  not  made  as  to  the  word  of 
God.  What  divided  them  was  that  what  constituted  isolating  a 
passage  for  Smith  was  taking  it  out  of  its  historical  context  while 
what  constituted  isolating  a passage  for  Cunningham  was  taking  it 
out  of  its  theological  context.  For  Smith,  the  Bible  was  “the 

46  Ibid.,  588-589. 

47  ^dir^rgh^h^S^O)11  29O01’  “WhaI  Hist°ry  Teaches  us  to  Seek  in  ‘he  Bible”. 


131 


story  of  God’s  saving  self-manifestation”;  for  Cunningham  “It 
was  one  great  leading  design  of  God,  in  inspiring  and  communi- 
cating his  word,  to  make  known  to  men  some  great  fundamental 
views  of  doctrine  and  duty”.48  The  difference  is  between  God 
revealing  Himself  in  His  acts  and  God  revealing  His  will  in  His 
declarations.  It  might  be  argued  that  the  differences  between 
Cunningham  and  Smith  in  their  approach  to  the  Bible  would  be 
negligible  if  the  difference  in  their  view  of  the  Bible  was  not 
enormous. 

It  is  only  a little  surprising,  therefore,  that  Cunningham  had 
misgivings  about  “lower”  criticism  as  well  as  “higher”  criticism. 
The  mere  settlement  of  the  text,  “the  decision  of  all  questions 
about  the  reading  for  the  purpose  of  exhibiting  the  sacred  text  as 
nearly  as  possible  as  it  came  from  the  hands  of  its  original 
authors”,  as  he  described  the  “lower”,  was  for  him  important,  but 
only  insofar  as  it  paved  the  way  for  interpretation.  What  mattered 
was  “the  investigation  of  the  sense  and  meaning”  of  Scripture’s 
statements,  that  is,  hermeneutics  or  exegesis.49  His  belief  that 
every  word  of  Scripture  had  been  given  by  God  should  not  be 
taken,  then,  as  an  ultimate  concern  even  for  the  purity  of  the  text. 
A lot  of  the  work  done  in  trying  to  ascertain  it,  he  felt,  was 
insignificant.50  Although  he  believed  it  was  “necessary  and 
imperative  that  ministers  should  acquire  some  knowledge  of  the 
leading  points  involved  in  it”,  he  also  believed  that  the  subject  was 
“not  one  of  very  great  practical  importance,  so  far  as  concerns  the 
actual  discovery  of  the  mind  and  will  of  God  from  his  word”.5 1 

Cunningham  fits  least  tidily  into  the  thesis  that  the  views  of  the 
Free  Church  Fathers  embody  a kind  of  embryonic  criticism.  What 
he  shared  with  the  critics  was  a conviction  that  every  passage  in  the 
Bible  ought  to  be  analysed  with  the  utmost  care;  but  he  covered  this 
with  an  equally  firm  conviction  that  the  results  of  such  analysis 
could  not  be  inconsistent  with  “the  general  scheme  of  truth  taught 
in  the  Bible”.52  He  was  unequivocally  opposed  to  criticism  as  he 
understood  it.  He  described  it  as  carried  on  by  German  writers, 
“some  of  whom  have  brought  to  this  work  a large  amount  of 
learning,  accompanied  generally  with  a miserable  lack  of  common 
sense  and  sound  logic”.5  3 And  in  what  he  labelled  “the  thorough 
and  daring  infidelity  of  German  rationalists”,  he  nearly 
paraphrased  the  views  for  which  George  Adam  Smith  was 
impeached  less  than  sixty  years  later: 

48  Cunningham,  Lectures,  597. 

49  Ibid.,  545.  „ 

50  He  cited  Griesbach’s  Greek  Testament.  Although  he  believed  it  superior  to  the 

Textus  Receptus,  he  considered  it  overdone.  Ibid.,  549. 

51  Ibid.,  550. 

52  Ibid.,  596-597. 

53  Cunningham,  Lectures,  422. 


132 


“It  is  a favourite  idea  of  the  German  rationalists,  and  is 
another  specimen  of  their  infidelity,  that  the  system  of 
doctrine  which  is  contained  in  the  Bible  is  capable  of 
progressive  and  indefinite  improvement;  that  as  it  stands  in 
the  Bible  it  is  mixed  up  with  many  crude  and  ill-digested 
notions,  such  as  might  be  expected  to  proceed  from  men  who 
lived  in  a comparatively  rude  and  uncultivated  age,  but  that, 
with  the  march  of  intellect  and  the  progress  of  literature  and 
science,  men  may  be  expected  to  be  better  able  to  separate  the 
chaff  from  the  wheat,  to  throw  off  what  savours  of  an 
uncultivated  age  and  is  traceable  merely  to  local  or  temporary 
influences,  and  to  bring  out  fully  from  the  Scriptures  a system 
of  pure  and  rational  Christianity”. 5 4 
Cunningham’s  lectures  were  delivered  in  1843  but  were  not 
published  until  17  years  after  his  death  in  1861.  Thomas  Smith, 
their  editor,  thought  it  necessary,  therefore,  to  justify  their  issue  in 
the  light  of  the  changes  in  theology  that  had  taken  place  in  the 
interval.  “It  is  quite  true  that  if  Dr  Cunningham  had  been  alive 
now,  and  had  been  writing  on  the  same  subjects”,  Smith  wrote  in 
the  preface,  “his  manner  of  treating  them  would  have  been 
somewhat  different  from  that  in  which  he  treated  them  five-and- 
thirty  years  ago”.55  The  justification,  one  senses,  was  partly  an 
expression  of  regret  that  the  lectures  were  being  published  at  all,  a 
regret  that  A.  B.  Bruce,  though  “with  respect  amounting  to 
veneration  for  an  old  teacher,”  did  not  fail  to  express  very  frankly 
indeed.56 

Smith’s  comment  is  worth  pondering  nonetheless,  especially  in 
regard  to  the  debate  over  inspiration.  Smith  did  not  speculate  on 
how  the  Lectures  might  have  been  modified,  but  it  is  difficult  to 
imagine  Cunningham’s  view  of  Scripture  being  very  much  altered 
by  the  scholarship  of  the  thirty-five  years  between  their  delivery 
and  their  publication.  It  seems  more  likely  that  had  he  lived 
Cunningham  would  have  been  found  as  near  the  front  of 
traditionalist  ranks  in  1878  as  he  was  in  1843.  His  is  perhaps  the 
tightest  defence  of  inspiration  of  any  of  the  Free  Church  Fathers. 

54  Ibid.,  253.  Compare  this  with,  for  instance,  Smith’s  statement  to  the  Sub- 
Committee  of  the  College  Committee  of  the  United  Free  Church  of  Scotland, 
Appendix  II  to  the  Special  Report  of  the  College  Committee  to  the  General 
Assembly  of  1902,  pp.  10,  11. 

55  Cunningham,  Lectures,  p.  vii. 

56  Whether  this  work  should  ever  have  been  published  may  be  a matter  of 
question,  but  certain  it  is,  it  should  have  been  published  long  ago,  or  not  at  all. 
We  presume  it  owes  its  appearance  to  supposed  bearings  on  present  controversies 
within  the  church  of  which  the  author  was  a distinguished  ornament — a motive 
for  publication  which  the  outside  would  have  no  concern,  and  which  to  many 
within  the  pale  may  appear  to  degrade  the  work  into  the  position  of  a 
controversial  pamphlet.”  The  British  and  Foreign  Evangelical  Review  vol 
xxviii.  (London,  1878),  489-490. 


133 


Candlish  and  Cunningham  defended  the  same  rigid  doctrine  of 
inspiration,  but  in  different  circumstances,  by  different  means  and 
with  different  effects.  Candlish  wrote  no  treatise  on  inspiration. 
His  remarks  on  the  subject  were  often  first  delivered  in  lectures  to 
non-theological  audiences.  He  tended  to  be  un-systematic.  He 
allowed  himself  the  freedom  to  see  each  problem  in  its  own 
particularity,  demanding  its  own  solution.  His  solutions  were 
sometimes  speculative,  imaginative  and  tentative  and  his 
definitions  loose.5  7 Where  his  argument  was  most  winsome  it  was 
often  most  ambiguous.  Cunningham  was  much  less  ambiguous. 
His  Lectures  were  originally  given  to  ministerial  students  and  were 
set  therefore  in  a theological  and  apologetical  context.  He  saw 
every  difficulty  in  relation  to  what  he  believed  to  be  the  Bible’s  own 
dogmatic  system.  While  his  argument  was  consistent  it  was  not 
always  convincing,  perhaps  because  it  gave  nothing  away. 

Bannerman:  “Retreat” 

It  is  interesting  in  this  connection  that  Cunningham,  on  his 
death  bed,  committed  his  lectures  to  James  Bannerman,  his 
successor  at  one  remove  in  the  second  chair  of  Apologetics  at  New 
College,5  8 whose  views  of  Scripture,  according  to  Drummond  and 
Bulloch,  constitute  “a  cautious  retreat  from  an  untenable 
position”.59  Bannerman,  they  claim,  “had  clearly  dissociated 
himself  from  the  theory  of  verbal  inspiration  as  stated  at  the 
opening  of  New  College,  and  had  prepared  the  way  for  the  full 
employment  of  Biblical  Criticism  by  Free  Church  scholars”.60 

The  doubts  about  Bannerman’s  loyalty  to  the  older  view  derive 
primarily  from  his  assertion  that  the  doctrine  of  verbal  inspiration 
is  only  a theory,  without,  strictly  speaking,  biblical  support.  What 
he  said  was  this: 

“Although  instances  can  be  pointed  out  in  which  it  were 
difficult  to  deny,  in  consistency  with  any  fair  system  of 
intepretation,  that  Scripture  warrants  the  idea  of  verbal 
revelation,  yet  it  would  be  equally  difficult  to  prove  that  in  all 


57  For  instance,  in  the  course  of  explaining  what  he  understood  by  the  term 
inspiration,  Candlish  said,  “it  is  of  very  little  consequence  whether  you  call  this 
verbal  diction  or  not.  It  is  equivalent  to  verbal  dictation,  as  regards  the  reliance 
which  we  may  place  on  the  discourse,  or  the  document,  that  is  the  result  of  it”. 
Reason  and  Revelation,  23. 

58  Originally  the  second  Divinity  chair,  then  Apologetics,  Christian  Ethics,  and 
Pastoral  Theology,  now  Christian  Ethics  and  Practical  Theology. 

59  Drummond  and  Bulloch,  The  Church  in  Victorian  Scotland  1843-1874,  263. 
Bannerman  (and  James  Buchanan  to  whom,  along  with  Bannerman, 
Cunningham  had  committed  his  manuscripts)  did  not  live  long  enough  or  did  not 
think  it  feasible  to  publish  the  Lectures.  In  any  case,  the  job  fell,  at  Mrs 
Cunningham’s  request,  to  Smith. 

60  Ibid.,  264. 


134 


cases  words  were  the  medium  of  communication.  In  the 
matter  of  inspiration  (not  revelation),  the  proof  that  it  was 
always  carried  on  through  the  instrumentality  of  language  is 
still  less  decisive,  and  with  respect  to  both,  it  would  be  to  limit 
the  power  of  God  in  a manner  both  unwarranted  and 
presumptuous,  to  imagine  or  assert  that  He  cannot  employ 
other  instrumentality  to  effect  the  end  in  view”.6 1 

Bannerman  maintained  that  “the  connection  between  human 
thought  and  language  is  not  of  that  invariable  or  essential  kind  to 
justify  us  in  saying  that  there  can  be  no  avenue  to  the  mind  except 
through  words,  and  no  means  by  which  its  ideas  may  be  guided  to 
the  infallible  expression  of  them  except  a verbal  inspiration”.6 2 
God  may  have  sometimes  revealed  Himself  in  audible  speech,  to 
the  prophets  for  instance,  but  that  the  recording  of  that  revelation 
was  verbally  inspired  cannot  be  proved.  Had  God  chosen, 
Bannerman  argued,  He  could  have  used  other  means  to  effect  His 
communication  and  it  might  be  different  from  what  it  is.  To  affirm 
anything  else  is  to  limit  God  and  to  affirm  too  much.  He  concluded 
in  a less  than  dogmatic  fashion:  “Verbal  inspiration,  as  the  method 
of  the  divine  agency,  is  a doctrine  which,  if  it  cannot  be  affirmed  to 
be  false,  can  as  little  be  affirmed  to  be  true.  If  it  does  not  run 
counter  to  anything  found  in  Scripture,  it  is,  we  suspect,  an 
explanation  of  the  mystery  which  Scripture  does  not  demand”.63 

Plainly  Bannerman  did  not  advocate  the  theory  of  verbal 
inspiration.  At  least  he  did  not  advocate  the  theory  that  “human 
language  was  the  medium  through  which  the  Holy  Spirit  both 
revealed  truth  to  the  prophet  and  impowered  him  to  speak  with 
infallible  accuracy”.64  He  was  very  careful  to  distinguish  between 
revelation  and  inspiration.  He  could  speak  freely  therefore  about  the 
way  he  believed  God  had  made  Himself  and  His  will  known  to  men  in 
the  first  instance  (revelation)  and  at  the  same  time  refuse  to  venture 
any  theory  as  to  how  that  knowledge  was  transferred  without  error 
to  the  sacred  page  in  the  second  (inspiration).  Some  of  his 
colleagues  were  not  as  careful  and  so  imply  that  the  words  God 
suggested  to  the  authors  of  Scripture  in  inspiring  them  were  also  the 
means  He  used  to  reveal  Himself  to  them.  Thus  Alexander  Black, 
first  professor  of  New  Testatment  in  New  College:  “It  is  by  words 
that  we  engage  in  the  exercise  of  communion  with  God;  it  was  by 
words  that  God  communicated  the  knowledge  of  His  will  to  men  in 
the  respective  languages  that  He  was  pleased  to  employ  for  this 

61  Bannerman,  Inspiration,  247. 

62  Ibid. 

63  Ibid.,  248. 

64  Bibliotheca  Sacra  was  perceptive  enough  to  see  that  the  theory  of  verbal 
inspiration  that  Bannerman  rejected  was  the  theory  (re-)defined  in  this  particular 
way.  Bibliotheca  Sacra,  vol.,  xxii,  352. 


135 


purpose”.65  Bannerman  objected  to  the  theory  of  verbal 
inspiration  on  the  ground  that,  though  it  may  have  been  the  least 
ambiguous  way  of  stating  the  Biblical  doctrine  of  plenary 
inspiration,  it  was  also  a description  of  the  method  of  inspiration 
which  the  Bible  did  not  support.66 

Whether  or  not  he  had  disassociated  himself  from  the  older 
view  is  another  matter.  After  all,  it  could  be  argued  that  Candlish’s 
interpretation  of  the  creation  narrative  also  constitutes  defection. 
The  differences  between  Bannerman  and  Cunningham,  or  between 
Bannerman  and  Candlish  or  Candlish  and  Cunningham,  should 
not  be  seen  as  differences  of  opinion  about  the  completeness  or 
importance  of  Scripture  and  its  inspiration.  On  that  they  were 
unanimous.  Their  real  differences  are  of  a subtler  kind  and  show 
up  only  as  each  worked  out  separately  his  own  argument  in 
Scripture’s  joint  defence. 

Both  Cunningham  and  Bannerman,  for  example, 
acknowledged  the  impropriety  of  declaring  a priori  that  God  could 
make  His  will  known  to  men  only  through  divinely  inspired 
human  language;  but  whereas  Cunningham  maintained  that  in  fact 
He  does,  Bannerman  argued  that  He  does  not — not  always 
anyway.  There  is  nothing  above  or  beyond  the  words  of  Scripture 
that  conveys  to  us  authentically  or  authoritatively  the  will  of  God 
for  our  salvation,  Cunningham  proclaimed.6 7 “The  divine 
certainty  and  the  divine  authority  of  the  doctrine  given  by  God”, 
Bannerman  declared  to  the  contrary,  “are  no  less  infallible  and 
absolute  when  they  speak  to  us  through  the  thought,  in  whatever 
way,  truly  presented  to  the  mind,  than  when  they  speak  through  the 
words  which  have  been  selected  as  the  medium  in  the  original  text 
for  presenting  it.”6 8 

On  the  related  question  of  errors  in  Scripture  there  was  a similar 
harmony-disharmony.  Bannerman  and  Cunningham  agreed  that 
such  errors  as  existed  were  errors  in  the  copies  and  not  in  the 
autographs,  but  they  disagreed  concerning  the  essential  nature  of 
the  problem  involved  and  the  best  way  of  solving  it. 6 9 Cunningham 
saw  it  primarily  as  a matter  of  recovering  the  text  in  its  primal 
integrity.  He  believed  that  although  we  have  no  guarantee  that  the 


65  Alexander  Black,  “The  Exegetical  Study  of  the  Original  Scriptures  Considered 
in  Connexion  with  the  Training  of  Theological  Students”,  in  a letter  to  the  Rev. 
Thomas  McCrie,  Moderator  of  the  Free  Church  of  Scotland  (Edinburgh,  1856), 
7.  See  also  Cunningham,  Lectures,  343ff,  especially  perhaps  p.  346. 

66  But,  as  pointed  out  above  p.  121,  nearly  all  the  protagonists  disavowed  any 
attempt  to  describe  how  the  Bible  was  inspired.  It  is  his  finer  distinctions, 
therefore,  that  separate  Bannerman  from  his  colleagues,  not  his  views  on  the 
main  issue. 

67  Cunningham,  Lectures,  582. 

68  Bannerman,  Inspiration,  520. 

69  Ibid.,  5 1 3ff  and  Cunningham,  Lectures,  525ff. 


136 


word  of  God  has  been  kept  pure  in  any  one  manuscript  or  printed 
edition,  nonetheless  “God  has  preserved  it  in  purity  in  his  church, 
and  has  given  to  men  sufficient  materials,  in  due  use  of  ordinary 
means,  for  obtaining  a substantially  accurate  record  of  what  he  has 
revealed”. 70  All  this  emphasized  the  need  for  a careful,  impartial, 
and  critical  handling  of  Scripture.71  Bannerman,  on  the  other 
hand,  though  never  discounting  the  need  for  diligent  scholarship  or 
mitigating  the  requirement  for  an  inspired  original,  argued  that 
“those  two  elements  of  plenary  inspiration  in  which  its  distinctive 
character  and  importance  consist — namely,  infallible  truth  and 
divine  authority — are  not  tied  to  certain  forms  of  language,  and  do 
not  exclusively  reside  in  a mysterious  selection  of  charmed 
words”. 7 2 

The  issue  for  Bannerman  was  less  of  language,  original  or 
translated,  than  of  the  nature  of  divine-human  intercourse.  “The 
thoughts  of  God  in  the  revelation  which  He  has  granted”,  he  said, 
“are  not  to  be  identified  with  the  mere  expressions  in  Hebrew  or 
Greek  which  convey  them  to  our  ears,  as  if  they  could  not  be 
conveyed  otherwise”. 7 3 

“Far  beneath  the  surface  of  its  language  there  is  a well  of 
truth  springing  up  into  everlasting  life;  and  it  needs  but  that 
we  should  draw  from  its  depths,  to  learn  that  it  is  divine  and 
unfathomable.  The  letter  of  the  Scripture  page,  even  though 
inspired  by  God,  is  not  so  deep  as  the  mind  of  God  that  is 
beneath  it”.74 

Given  the  differences  between  Cunningham  and  Bannerman  on 
the  manner  of  God’s  revelation,  there  could  hardly  have  been 
complete  agreement  between  them  on  the  intimately  related  matter 
of  understanding  it.  To  Cunningham’s  “the  written  word  must  be 
at  once  our  starting  point  and  our  goal”,  Bannerman  opposed, 
“what  is  stated  in  the  shape  of  formal  affirmation  is  little, 
compared  with  what  is  involved  and  implied  in  the  words,  without 
being  expressly  affirmed”.75  Cunningham  asserted  that  the 
Scriptures  have  but  one  sense  and  that  that  one  sense  can  be 
discovered  only  by  investigating  the  literal  and  grammatical 
meaning  of  Scripture’s  words  exactly  as  they  stand.  Bannerman 
urged  that  “to  rest  contented  with  the  words  of  inspired  men, 
neglecting  the  fuller  meaning  beneath,  or  to  require  that,  for  every 
truth  we  receive  as  God’s  truth,  we  should  show  proof  that  it  is  set 


70  perha^s8ppm536e537re5’  5331  ^ a'S°  ^ Wh°le  °f  Lecture  xlii>  in  Particular 

71  Ibid.,  600-601. 

72  Bannerman,  Inspiration,  519. 

73  Ibid. , 520. 

74  Ibid.,  583. 

75  Ibid. 


137 


down  expressly  in  so  many  terms  in  Scripture,  is  a practice 
condemned  by  many  instances  in  the  word  of  God”.76 

Much  of  this  disagreement  is  explicable  in  the  light  of 
Bannerman’s  insistence  that  history  is  the  primary  method  of 
God’s  disclosure.  He  referred  to  the  sacred  writers  as  “the 
historians  of  revelation” 7 7 and  observed  that  “the  lessons  that 
God  has  taught  in  His  revelation  were  first  written  on  the  outward 
pages  of  history,  and  only  afterwards  written  in  the  words  and  with 
the  commentary  and  explanations  of  the  Bible”.78  As  with 
Robertson  Smith  (Bible  history  is  “the  story  of  God’s  saving  self- 
manifestation”), Christianity  for  Bannerman  was  “less  a system  of 
spiritual  truths  presented  in  abstract  form,  than  a series  of  facts 
and  examples  exhibiting  the  manner  in  which  God  deals  with  the  sin 
that  he  hates,  and  provides  for  the  recovery  of  the  sinner  whom  He 
pities”.79  Earlier  on  he  had  put  it  even  more  emphatically:  “It  is 
God’s  method  to  reveal  Himself  by  facts  rather  than  by 
propositions;  and  ...  in  these  supernatural  events  which  have  been 
wrought  on  the  earth,  and  recorded  in  the  Bible,  there  is  a spiritual 
meaning  as  deep  and  true  as  is  found  even  in  the  words”.80  In 
Bannerman’s  view  the  historicity  of  Scripture  precedes  the  fact  that 
the  Bible  is  inspired,  rather  than  the  other  way  around.  “So 
thoroughly  is  revelation  identified  with  Bible  history,”  he  claimed, 
“that  if  the  Bible  be  not  historically  true,  it  is  a matter  of  no 
consequence  whether  it  be  inspired  or  not.”8 1 

By  his  insistence  on  the  essentially  historical  nature  of  God’s 
revelation,  Bannerman  took  a harder,  more  traditional  line  on 
Genesis  than  did  Candlish,  whose  commentary  Drummond  and 
Bulloch  think  “highly  conservative”. 8 2 Candlish,  as  already 
shown,  held  the  creation  account  to  be  figurative,  but  Bannerman, 
this  time  in  full  agreement  with  Cunningham,  maintained  that  it  is 
historical  and  that  its  author,  “the  historian  of  Genesis”,  got  his 
information  from  God.83  To  deny  its  authenticity,  Bannerman 

76  Ibid.,  586. 

77  Ibid.,  101. 

78  Ibid.,  27. 

79  Ibid. , 25.  The  degree  to  which  Smith  echoed  Bannerman  on  this  particular  point 
is  remarkable:  “The  saving  truth  by  believing  which  men  are  to  become 
Christians  has  the  form  of  history.  1 am  not  to  be  saved  by  believing  some  eternal 
truths  about  God.  I must  believe  that  my  salvation  is  rendered  possible  only  by 
the  work  of  Christ  which  took  place  historically  and  among  men.”  “Christianity 
and  the  Supernatural”  in  Lectures  and  Essays  of  William  Robertson  Smith,  edd. 
J.  S.  Black  and  George  Chrystal  (London,  1912),  121. 

80  Bannerman,  Inspiration,  14. 

81  Ibid.,  31. 

82  Drummond  and  Bulloch,  The  Church  in  Victorian  Scotland,  1843-1874,  255. 

83  Bannerman,  Inspiration,  lb-11.  “What  reliance”,  Cunningham  asked,  “could 
be  placed  upon  an  account  of  the  creation  of  the  world,  and  the  important 
transactions  connected  with  the  origin  of  our  race,  by  a man  who  lived  2,500 
years  after  they  had  taken  place,  unless  God  had  directed  him?”  Lectures,  299. 


138 


t 

t 


« 

| 

t 


0 

•ll 


argued,  would  be,  implicitly,  to  deny  the  possibility  of  a 
supernatural  revelation. 

To  say  that  God  has  revealed  Himself  pre-eminently  in  history 
is  not  necessarily  to  say  that  everything  in  the  Bible  that  has  the 
appearance  of  history  is  in  fact  history  or  that  everything  that  is 
history  is  absolutely  accurate  in  every  detail;  and  there  can  be  little 
doubt  that  although  Bannerman  agreed  with  Robertson  Smith  on 
the  first  he  would  have  disagreed  with  him  on  both  the  other  issues, 
and  on  much  else  besides,  as  any  reading  of  Smith  would  show. 
What  is  important  is  that  Bannerman  agreed  with  Smith  at  all;  and 
what  is  ironical  is  that  it  is  his  view  of  the  historical  character  of 
God’s  revelation,  which  generally  separates  him  from 
Cunningham,  that  on  the  particular  question  of  Genesis,  brings 
him  into  agreement  with  Cunningham  against  Candlish  whose 
spirit  he  seems  more  to  share. 

Defending  the  doctrine  of  plenary  inspiration  was  a much  more 
sophisticated  operation  than  simply  believing  it,  more  mined  with 
complication  and  subtlety  than  even  its  staunchest  proponents  in 
the  middle  of  last  century  could  have  known.  Notions  of 
considerable  significance  were  exposed  in  the  delicate  task  of 
clarifying  the  position  they  were  thought  to  defend.  The  problem  of 
defining  the  doctrine  is  a case  in  point.  Verbal  inspiration  might 
mean  simply  that  the  influence  of  God  extends  to  the  choice  of  the 
actual  words  of  Scripture;  on  the  other  hand  it  might  also  be  taken 
to  mean  that  God  communicates  with  men  solely  or  primarily  by 
means  of  human  language.  If  the  latter  meaning  was  understood 
then  Bannerrnan’s  finer  distinctions  challenged,  in  the  longer  run, 
not  only  the  doctrine  of  verbal  inspiration  but  the  concept  of 
Christian  belief  which  supported  it  and  depended  upon  it.  For 
apprehending  God  in  historical  events,  even  if  they  are  mediated 
through  a written  account,  is  a different  thing  from  comprehending 
His  will  as  He  has  expressed  it  in  words,  and  the  requirement  for  an 
absolutely  accurate  text  exactly  interpreted  is  modified  to  the  extent 
that  Christian  belief  is  thought  of  as  more  like  intuitive  seeing  or 
perceiving  than  rational  understanding. 

The  older  position  was  not  monolithic.  Its  essential  character, 
and  the  intention  of  its  defenders,  are  clear,  but  the  very  variety  of 
the  ways  in  which  it  was  defended  suggests  that  it  was  by  no  means 
free  from  ambiguities  and  differences  of  opinion.  Upon  the 
resolution  of  some  of  these  ambiguities  and  differences,  as  the  case 
of  Bannerman  perhaps  best  illustrates,  fairly  important  issues 
hang. 


Conclusion 

If  the  various  styles  of  Christian  piety  could  be  ordered  on  a 
kind  of  graph  or  spectrum,  with  objective/rational  at  one  end  and 

139 

| D 


subjective/experimental  at  the  other,  there  can  be  little  difficulty 
deciding  on  which  side  of  centre  to  plot  mid-nineteenth  century 
Scottish  Evangelicalism.  The  word  Calvinism  suggests  theology 
nearly  as  much  as  it  does  a particular  type  of  theology,  and 
Cunningham’s  pregnant  phrase  “the  Calvinism  of  the  Word  of 
God’’  characterizes  a mood  or  an  ethos  as  aptly  as  it  does  a system 
or  a method.84  The  tone  is  decidedly  doctrinal  and  cognitive  as 
opposed  to  mystical  and  intuitive.85 

The  study  of  church  history,  to  Cunningham’s  mind,  was  most 
serviceable  as  an  apologetic  tool.  In  teaching  it,  he  told  the 
Assembly  of  1845,  he  intended,  first,  to  “give  an  historical 
exhibition  of  the  various  deviations  which,  in  the  course  of  eighteen 
centuries,  had  occurred  from  the  truth  laid  down  in  the  Holy 
Scriptures’’,  and  second,  to  “give  a detailed  view  of  the  leading 
controversies  which  from  time  to  time  have  agitated  men’s  minds, 
and  which  have  exerted  the  greatest  influence  on  belief  and 
doctrine’’. 8 6 According  to  Rainy,  Cunningham’s  pupil,  successor 
and  biographer,  the  course  bore  the  marks  of  Cunningham’s 
intent:  “The  charm  of  historic  detail  was  necessarily  sacrificed;  the 
cross  lights  from  human  nature  and  experience  faded  away;  the 
course  became  severe,  and  depended  wholly  on  one  great  interest  as 
its  motive  and  justification”. 8 7 Cunningham’s  method,  Rainy 
said,  was  not  merely  to  narrate  a series  of  historical  events,  or  even 
to  explain  how  any  one  of  them  came  to  prominence:  “It  presses  on 
at  once  to  the  practical  and  ultimate  question  in  which  the 
theologian  is  interested,  viz.,  What  is  true?”88 

Cunningham’s  failure  to  distinguish  between  history  and 
apologetics  was  due  not  so  much  to  any  confusion  between  them  as 
to  a more  fundamental  conviction  about  what  truth  is  and  how  it  is 


84  The  history  of  the  church,  Cunningham  claimed,  shows  that  those  who  have  held 
defective  views  of  inspiration  have  very  often  held  erroneous  views  of  the  central 
doctrines  of  Christianity.  “There  has  generally  been,  though  of  course  not 
without  occasional  exceptions,  a remarkable  parallelism  or  analogy  between  the 
soundness  of  men’s  views  upon  the  subject  of  inspiration  and  their  general 
orthodoxy,  or  the  correctness  of  their  sentiments  upon  the  leading  principles  of 
divine  truth — a parallelism  manifest  through  all  the  gradations  of  error,  from 
German  Rationalism,  which  is  infidelity,  up  through  Socinianism,  Pelagianism, 
Arminianism,  to  truth,  as  exhibited  in  the  Calvinism  of  the  word  of  God”. 
Lectures,  407. 

85  This  may  be  an  important  difference  between  Scottish  and  English 
evangelicalism.  The  evangelical  movement  in  England,  according  to  John 
Baillie,  “had  its  own  contribution  to  make  towards  the  emergence  of  the 
romantic  temper  in  that  country”.  (The  Idea  of  Revelation  in  Recent  Thought, 
12). 

86  As  quoted  in  Robert  Rainy,  Life  of  William  Cunningham  (London,  1871), 
226-227. 

87  Ibid.,  229. 

88  Ibid.  It  should  also  be  kept  in  mind  that  Cunningham  came  to  Church  History 
from  Apologetics. 


140 


arrived  at.  It  was  reported  to  Cunningham  that  his  appointment  to 
the  History  post  had  been  opposed  by  some  on  the  ground  that  he 
had  no  imagination.  His  response:  “Don’t  you  think  a want  of 
imagination  is  rather  a good  feature  in  a historian?  K ' Truth, 
historical  or  theological,  was  not  the  yield  of  imaginative  but  rather 
of  rational  processes  and  church  history  was  handmaid  to 
systematic  theology.  The  same  unspeculating  insistence  on 
dogmatic  certainty  and  consistency  had  earlier  governed 
Cunningham’s  handling  of  Scripture  and  the  doctrine  of 
inspiration.  Severely  technical  as  his  method  was,  it  was  never  fully 
critical.  It  was  not  allowed  to  breach  or  even  to  test  the  boundaries 
of  his  theological  system.90 

Candlish  encouraged  more  daring.  “The  advocates  oi 
inspiration — even  of  verbal  inspiration — ” he  declared  in  his 
examination  of  F.  D.  Maurice’s  Essays  “have  no  objection 
whatever  to  cast  the  Bible  unreservedly  into  the  crucible  of 
exegetical  and  antiquarian  analysis;  and  they  are  not  careful  though 
the  result  should  be,  along  with  the  explanation  of  many  old 
puzzles,  the  raising  of  some  new  ones”.91  The  defenders  and 
expounders  of  revelation  will  be  listened  to,  he  said  elsewhere, 
provided  thoughtful  men  understand  that  they  have  no  intention  of 
putting  down  inquiry  by  the  mere  assertion  of  authority  or 
imputation  of  heresy.  “Let  them  see  that  we  face  the  question  in  a 
very  different  spirit”,  he  proclaimed,  “that  we  have  something  of 
the  Baconian  as  well  as  the  dogmatic  mind  in  us.”9  -’  But  Candlish 
may  be  the  best  illustration  of  the  evils  that  beset  those  who 
attempt,  seriously  and  more  or  less  fearlessly,  to  be  open  in 
intellectually  unsettled  times.  His  appreciation  of  science,  modified 
by  his  aptitude  for  dogma,  sometimes  produced  answers  to 
questions  about  inspiration  that,  rather  than  preclude  further 
inquiry,  tend  to  invite  it.  As  for  imagination,  it  is  precisely  in 
Candlish’s  occasional  reliance  on  it — often  the  most  winsome 
though  not  the  most  cogent  sections  of  his  argument — that  he  loses 
his  way  and  comes  nearest  the  subjectivism  he  eschews  but  cannot 
avoid. 

Even  the  attempt  to  say  no  more  on  Scripture’s  behalf  than  the 
Scriptures  themselves  say  was  not  without  its  complications.  That 

89  Ibid.,  225. 

90  To  do  him  justice,  Cunningham  was  never  merely  rational.  Although  his 
approach  to  the  Bible  and  Christian  belief  is  almost  always  described  in  terms 
that  are  more  cerebral  than  those  of  the  other  protagonists,  he  insisted  as  much 
as  any  of  them  that  no  effective  knowledge  of  God’s  word  could  be  had  without 
the  aid  of  the  Holy  Spirit  and  that  the  essential  thing  about  any  view  of 
inspiration  is  that  it  should  lead  those  who  hold  it  to  submit  themselves  to 
Scripture’s  authority.  See  Lectures,  559  and  407-408. 

91  Robert  S.  Candlish,  Examination  of  Mr  Maurice's  Theological  Essays  (London, 
1845),  386. 

92  Christianity  and  Recent  Speculations,  p.  vii. 


141 


Bannerman’s  588  pages  should  be  considered  both  a defence  of  the 
more  rigid  doctrine  of  inspiration  and  a preparation  for  higher 
criticism  is  perhaps  the  evidence.  No  one  could  mistake  the 
intention  of  Bannerman’s  book;  not  everyone  was  able  to  see  its 
implications.9 3 And  in  Bannerman  too,  perhaps  more  than  in 
Candlish,  there  are  sporadic  outbreaks  of  the  intuitive  or 
experiential,  the  activity  of  a kind  of  spiritual  fifth  column,  never 
to  be  completely  subdued  in  even  the  most  rationally  inclined  of 
religious  men  and  debate. 

The  encounter  with  what  Candlish  pejoratively  referred  to  as 
“theological  science”  drew  out  the  doctrine  of  plenary  inspiration, 
stretched  it  and  thinned  it  as  it  forced  it  to  come  to  terms  with  itself, 
thus  exposing  its  weaknesses  as  well  as  demonstrating  its  strengths. 
More  precisely,  it  was  perhaps  not  the  doctrine  but  the  defence  of 
the  doctrine  which  was  tested;  and  in  the  process  the  doctrine  itself 
was  sometimes  transmuted.  Again  Bannerman  is  the  primary  case 
in  point:  he  felt,  apparently,  that  he  had  to  jettison  verbal 
inspiration  in  order  to  save  plenary  inspiration,  which  meant  giving 
the  traditional  position  a different  character  altogether.9 

There  were  only  a few  tactical  options  open  to  the 
traditionalists.  One  was  simply  to  repudiate  the  hostile  forces,  to 
argue  that  the  battle  was  pre-eminently  spiritual,  that  the  truth 
could  be  seen  only  by  the  eye  of  faith  and  probably  never 
completely  in  this  life.  The  other  was  to  engage  them,  to  contest 
every  issue  on  its  own  ground,  answering  blow  for  blow,  and 
sometimes  allowing  one’s  position  to  be  vulnerable  or  even 
modifiable  in  order  to  secure  its  defence.  The  traditionalists  took 
both  options.  Their  spirituality  required  that  they  take  the  first, 
their  rationality  required  that  they  take  the  second.  But  insofar  as 
they  took  the  second  they  admitted  that  criticism  was  with  them,  it 
only  as  an  evil  to  be  checked.  In  other  words  they  joined  the  battle. 
Perhaps  neither  their  faith  not  their  theology  would  allow  them  to 
do  otherwise.  But  the  defence  of  the  doctrine  of  inspiration  itself 
proved  to  be  a double-edged  sword.  Believing  may  have  fostered 
believing  criticism. 


93  The  Christian  Treasury  welcomed  it  as  “a  standard  work  capable  of  res'stl"? 
combined  attack  which  infidelity  and  scepticism  may  hurl  against  the  divine 
inspiration  of  the  Scriptures”,  and  The  British  and  Foreign 

claimed  that  it  “contains  incomparably  the  most  systematic  and  complet 
discussion  of  the  great  question  of  the  inspiration  of  Holy  Scripture  which  h 

vet  been  presented  to  the  Christian  Church  • , 

94  “And  this  indeed,  is  the  peculiar  character  of  the  doctrine,  that  you  cannot 
diminish  or  qualifi  bin  you  reverse  it.”  Coleridge.  Aids  ,o  Rt/leco*  snd  t he 
Confessions  of  an  Inquiring  Spirit,  318.